Public Participation & Stakeholder Engagement

We have led numerous participatory and partnership projects and are skilled at facilitating and engaging stakeholders in many aspects of catchment and landscape management. This includes developing visualisation tools and frameworks to help convey complex environmental information to technical and non-technical audiences, including central government and agencies, regional and local government, industry, charities, community interest groups, farmers and landowners.

Key Projects

Natural England – Catchment Risk Assessments

These were commissioned to inform diffuse water pollution plans and engage wider stakeholders.

Defra / Environment Agency – Tamar Pilot Catchment

ESP staff are leading this pilot project with the aim of developing through public participation a more integrated catchment management plan for the Tamar catchment. This stakeholder led approach is designed to ensure participants have a sense of real and measurable contribution to the development of this shared plan. This pilot project is just one of several being funded by Defra which have the potential to shape the future of catchment management in the UK.

Fowey Reverse Auction

ESP staff were involved with the development and instigation of the Fowey Reverse Auction, which aimed to distribute funding from South West Water through the Upstream Thinking Project. Rather than a farm advisor led approach evaluating individual farms on a ‘first come first served basis’ a reverse auction was set up to allow all farmers to bid for projects that would improve raw water quality in the Fowey.